


Halfway

by ravenna_c_tan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:16:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1910580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenna_c_tan/pseuds/ravenna_c_tan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you're amnesiac and in the care of the state, you spend a lot of time trying not to think about why the boy named Harry Potter seems familiar to you...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halfway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onibutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onibutterfly/gifts).



> Written for the HP Summersmut fest and originally posted August 5, 2008 on Livejournal. oni_butterfly said in her fic request "Any type of Non-Magical AU would absolutely make my year." She was hoping for Snarry, Severus/Sirius, Snape/Harry/Sirius. I couldn't quite get the three of them together without Severus going on strike, so I got as close as I could! And I know this isn't what some would consider "AU" strictly speaking, because there is a canon-compliant explanation for it all, but it certainly has an AU feel, no?

*Part One*

I should be screaming. I should be screaming in horror and terror and disappointment and a thousand other emotions except that it is bloody impossible to scream with the four-inch-long fang of a giant snake puncturing one's larynx.

I wake in a cold sweat, then, a hand flying instinctively to my neck, as if to stanch the flow of my lifeblood... but of course it is only a dream. Still, it takes a moment to adjust to the reality of my dingy room, the strange whisper of electric cars rushing past outside, the fluorescent flicker of the bulb in the hall. 

I go through this nearly every time I waken. Wondering why my door is open, sickly light shining through it. Then I recall, they keep the doors open at night here. 

Only once have I been woken by another resident's screaming.

Nonetheless, I look forward to departing this place soon. They take good care of us, but I want a life of my own. I lie awake, waiting for the nightmare-induced adrenaline to seep from my veins, trying to imagine the life I will have. 

It is hard to do. Inevitably I turn to trying to imagine the life I once had. But there is nothing. No memory, no records. I was found in an alley, unconscious. It wasn't until four days later I awoke in a hospital bed with no idea how I had gotten there--indeed, no memories at all. The clipboard at the end of my bed identified me as John Doe. Doe seemed a good name. It seemed to fit.

Later they explained that I could choose a name--that John Doe was a moniker applied to cases of unknown identity. I decided to keep Doe, but rechristened myself Stephen, after a character in one of the books in the hospital library. Stephen does not quite fit, but I have kept it anyway, at least until I find something better. It's rare that anyone addresses me by given name anyway. 

The only time they do is in the discussion group we are forced to endure every morning. Our group leader is a prim young counselor who addresses us each by first name (while we call her Doctor Jacobs). We sit in a circle and she encourages us to talk, to express ourselves, and to understand each other. For some reason I picture her doing this as a child with a circle of dolls, except the dolls would all be girls.

We are all men here. If there are women who are being rehabilitated for re-entry into society the way we are, I have never seen them. They are in a different building perhaps. 

I resent these morning meetings greatly. "Stephen," she will say to me, before, or after, or quietly some other time, "it's imperative you improve your socialization. Else you'll not be released."

"I'm an amnesiac, not a sociopath," I'll tell her bitterly. Or, "Since when is it a crime to be anti-social?" Or, "If the group were not populated by idiots and fools, perhaps I would be more inclined to speak."

But speak I must. 

Sleep comes slowly. When I wake in the morning, it is with sand in my eyes and a foul mood.

***

I dress in black trousers and a clean shirt, buttoned up to the collar, stomach aching as I take only coffee for breakfast, and then as the men in my group drift in ones and twos out of the dining room I make my way to the room where the discussion takes place.

The mismatched chairs are perpetually arranged in a circle, and Dr. Jacobs is already there, her hair pinned back in a severe bun and her glasses perched on her nose. She sits in one of the wooden chairs, leaving the armchairs and rolling chairs and the one rocking chair for the others. The room is large, carpeted and furnished with lamps and tables, but not enough books to make it like a library. She makes a tick mark on the clipboard in her lap as each man comes in.

I make a mental list as they do, too, naming them each in my head with the nickname I have given them. I have already taken my seat in a wooden chair when the Village Idiot comes in, his face falling noticeably as he sees me there. He is slightly bucktoothed, his words whistle when he speaks, and although he is a harmless, mild sort, he appears to have Yorkshire pudding for brains. 

Today perhaps it is only half a pudding. "Morning, Doctor," he says, miming taking off a hat and bowing to her, but in his nervousness about me sitting there, he misjudges the movement of his feet and nearly falls on his face. His knuckles scrape a chair as he flails for one moment before sitting down.

The Commander sits down next to him, his face stoic as always. The Commander, we surmise, fought in some kind of war and hasn't been quite right since. He speaks rarely, but he also seems to have no aspirations to leave this place, so I suppose he need not prove his ability to interact civilly. 

We are twelve in all. Rushing in at the last moment before the clock strikes ten is the one I call The Virgin. He's barely eighteen, this one, and decidedly out of place with the broken down rejects from society that make up most of the house's population. I've no idea what he's doing here, but perhaps I do not want to know. There's a bright earnestness about him that makes me long to grasp him by the shoulders and shake him until he sees how dismal this place is. His fresh-scrubbed demeanour makes me want to sully him somehow. 

I do not know what I did in my past, but surely one does not end up lying half-dead in a back alley of the city by good, clean living.

The Virgin slips into his seat, out of breath from rushing to be on time, his cheeks blotchy pink, and he tries to stammer out an apology. 

"That won't be necessary, Harry," Dr. Jacobs says, cutting him off before he can get out more than a word or two, while I think to myself that it is just like the boy to try to draw attention to himself. "We'll give Sigmund a bit of time to join us." She glances at the one empty chair in the circle, right next to me. 

Oh joy, I shall endure The Thief at my elbow today. I hope silently that some mishap befell him, but just as I am beginning to think he won't be joining us, he saunters in, whistling merrily for all the world like a man who has just gotten away with something. 

Which is why I call him the Thief. Because he very nearly always acts like that. 

He crosses the circle, the legs of his tattered jeans whispering against each other as he makes his way to his chair and throws himself into it with a kind of insouciant grace that makes me want to slap him. He should at least respect Dr. Jacobs enough not to slouch so.

She begins to speak, and my eyes narrow with rage as I realise his neck is damp with sweat... and I know with a strange certainty that the reason The Virgin was nearly late is no coincidence. Something very like jealousy burns in my veins as I resent greatly the thought that I might need to rename the Virgin in my head and I am affronted by the thought that they would so blatantly break the rules. 

Intimacy among the residents is not allowed.

I have not heard a word she has said. "Stephen?" she prompts me. "I'd like you to share first today."

Caught out not paying attention I look around at the faces all directing their gazes at me. I grip the wooden handles of the chair in my fingers. She is testing me, I know, asking me to speak first like this. To set the tone of the discussion. To say something about myself without it being a response to something one of the others said. 

The only thing we do not talk about in discussion group is why we are there in the house. What illness or trouble or problem put us there. But what do I have to talk about? I will not natter on as some do about what they ate for breakfast or the feelings they had while stirring artificial cream into their coffee. 

"I dreamt last night I was being killed by a snake," I say. Perhaps speaking the unadorned truth will gain me points in her unknown tallies, at last. "A huge snake, larger than a man, and it had bitten me in the throat with a tooth as long as a stake." I hold up my hands to demonstrate the length of the tooth. 

"Oh, Stephen," she says, disappointment and disgust well muted in her voice, but there.

I am stung by this failure. "Dude, you need to get laid," speaks the Thief. The Virgin blushes.

***

In the afternoon we are allowed to study. In a room on the second floor there are computers which feed us government sanctioned training courses for various vocations. Another prerequisite to leaving the house is the ability to earn one's keep. I am nearly finished with the course in accounting and bookkeeping. Finding some small business somewhere to hire me will be another matter entirely, but until I pass the exams I need not let such thoughts occupy my brain. 

I pass the afternoon in an ordered trance of numbers and figures, fully expecting to stay there until dinner time. 

A quiet cough makes me look up from the screen. The Virgin is standing there, looking nervous.

"Can I help you?" I ask, my tone making it quite clear I've no intention of being helpful. Not if I can help it.

"Er, Doctor Jacobs mentioned you were good with the edusystem and that maybe I might get a bit of help from you." He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

"There's a perfectly good tutorial on the machine itself," I point out, gesturing to the empty cubicle across from mine. 

"Yeah, but..." He looks around as if someone will come to his rescue. 

I merely stare at him. If the boy cannot even finish a sentence, he cannot expect me to do else. 

He shuffles over to the seat and sits down, his back to me. As I turn back to my own work, I hear the hum of the machine he is using coming to life. I have barely returned to my own task, though, when the insistent beeping from behind me tells me he is having trouble. 

It is the frustrated sound out of his throat that finally prompts me to turn around. "Oh, please, Mr. Potter, surely someone of your generation ought to grasp the use of these infernal machines better than one such as me," I chide. He has one hand buried in the mop of his hair, making it stick up even more than usual. He and the Thief both, I think, are unkempt curs. 

That reminds me that I am resentful, but before I can make another cutting comment, he speaks, and what he says stops me cold. 

"If I learned how to use one in school... I don't remember it," he says half in a whisper. The one thing we do not talk about in discussion group is how we each ended up here. And generally one does not confide that in private either. "I don't... remember anything, really."

I cluck my tongue. "I'm certain I never used one before coming here," I say, which is not a lie--I do feel certain I did not, I just have no proof. "They're designed so that you ought to be able to follow the instructions without ever having done so."

He huffs in frustration but I myself am impressed with how relatively mild my own voice is. 

"Why are the letters arranged the way they are?" he laments. "I spend so long just trying to find the ones I want in order to type in what I need to."

"Well, patience I cannot give you," I snap, silencing the questions that are now trying to fight their way to the surface: what is your amnesia like? do you remember anything at all? do you ever have the sudden feeling you recognize something but still cannot place it? I stab at the keys until I have pulled up the tutorial on typing. "There. Start there."

I give him a bit of a shove on the shoulder, and he rolls an inch or two toward the keyboard in the chair he is sitting in. It is meant to be a dismissive motion, but somehow I know my hand lingers a moment too long. I'm not meant to be encouraging the brat, but, as we settle back to back, I hear a quiet "thank you" from his direction.

I have entirely forgotten than I meant to say something denigrating about the Thief. 

***

"Sigmund, would you start us off today?" Dr. Jacobs asks, looking at the Thief over the tops of her spectacles. "Mr. Stubman?" she tries, when he seems non-responsive behind a pair of dark glasses and eternally mussed hair. 

"Not feeling great today, love," he says, and that is the end of that. 

"I had a dream last night," pipes up The Virgin. I suppress a sneer. He is clearly speaking up to cover for the Thief. But imagine my surprise when his eyes, sea green in the morning sunlight in the room, focus on me for a split second before he looks away. "About a snake. A really big snake."

That gets a boorish guffaw out of Stubman and I want to kick him as the Virgin's cheeks colour. Not that the colour isn't pleasing in and of itself, but have some decency! It's one thing to be despoiling the boy against the regulations, but entirely another to make jokes about it. Highly inappropriate.

I am disturbed to realise that my imagination has provided me a vivid picture of the Thief's oversized member making the Virgin's throat bulge, and that my own trousers have grown uncomfortably tight. 

"Is that right?" asks Dr. Jacobs blandly. I note she doesn't ask what he thinks the dream means. "Anyone else have any interesting dreams?"

The Village Idiot saves us with a rambling account of how he was dreaming he was on an aeroplane, and the window was open, only you cannot have the window open on an aeroplane, he says, so this confused him greatly, and he spent the entire dream trying to find the right window to close... and when he woke up it turned out the fan on the bedside table was blowing directly into his face.

Imbecile, I think. I have never been on an aeroplane, I am sure of that, but surely when flying the feeling of the wind in one's face is appropriate. Do not ask me how I know this, but I feel it in my bones.

***

That afternoon I go into the computer room to find The Virgin waiting for me. He is typing slowly, but steadily, his eyes fixated on the screen. He does not even seem to notice I have entered the room, and I take this opportunity to study his face. Unguarded, creased with determination, there is something fierce there. Until now I have considered him vacuous, but something about that expression makes me think I must re-evaluate my impression of him. 

He looks up, startled by my presence at last. "Mr. Doe."

"Stephen," I say, finding my hand on that shoulder of his again. Briefly, only briefly. Had he not added the honorific and merely addressed me by surname, as most residents do each other, I would have thought nothing of it. But he has, and I am not sure why I resist it. "You must call me Stephen." 

"Okay," he says, relaxing a bit. "I suppose you should call me Harry."

"Harry," I say in agreement, but the name feels foreign in my mouth. I recall when chastising him yesterday I called him "Mr. Potter" and I wonder if this is an attempt to disarm me.

If so, it works. He asks me how to run a tutorial on cash registers, on how to become a check-out boy at a local market if he wants, and I manage to get him started with a minimum of fuss. It takes some explaining to get him to navigate the interface without the machine beeping angrily at him all the time, and it frustrates me that I lack the vocabulary to explain it well. But eventually he is pushing the buttons in the right order and moving the indicator on the screen in a less clumsy manner.

We work back to back in silence for an hour or two. Then his voice comes, very quietly, as if we've been talking all along.

"I did have a dream about a snake, you know."

"I didn't doubt that you did," I say, without turning around. 

"I have them often," he goes on, and I go still as a statue. "A couple of times a week."

"Is that right?" I ask, hoping I sound as bland as Dr. Jacobs. 

He seems to sense my curiosity, my hesitation, my struggle... or maybe he is just silent for a while. Then, "Yeah."

Me, too, I want to say. To declare something in common between us. To name us allies in this bleak place. But I cannot bring myself to say it. "They have medications," I say instead, "if your dreams disturb you too much."

Silence again. I have still not turned around. After a few more long moments, I hear him typing again. 

I go back to my own screen, but my concentration is gone. After a few more minutes I give up and leave the room. 

It isn't as if there is anything to be gained by a friendship or an alliance with an eighteen-year-old psych case, I tell myself as I lie atop my bed fully clothed. Soon I will be leaving here anyway, and hopefully will never see any of these people ever again. And even if I do not leave here soon, what can his association do for me? He is an annoying teenager, and besides, it is obvious enough that his association with Stubman would bring me into more contact with Stubman, which I most certainly do not want. The Thief seems more than content to while away his days here, playing basketball on the exercise patio out back, whose roof closes when the weather is bad, and taking advantage of the medical and psychological services offered. It is common knowledge among the residents that at least twice a week he is taken to a medical centre nearby, though no one has said to me exactly what it is he is being treated for.

I dislike him intensely. I dislike them both intensely, don't I? I dislike everyone, after all. 

But this place is lonely. I am lonely. Perhaps a head-case teenager as a friend, even if only for a short time, would be preferable to the isolation I've been experiencing...

No. I am perhaps not the most psychologically sound individual, as my presence here indicates, but I am not so blind nor stupid as to be unaware that I am growing attracted to the boy. I remind myself that there are reasons not to violate the rules. There would be penalties for that I would not want to pay. And if Stubman is already violating the boy... I shudder with revulsion. 

Then a thought occurs to me. What if the boy wants to free himself of Stubman's attentions by coming under my protection instead? Is that why the sudden interest in computers instead of basketball? 

It is a daft idea. Why would he choose me, of all the others? They all seem to like him. I don't. Is it because I am already antagonistic to the Thief? (But I am antagonistic to everyone.) Or is it because he thinks we have something in common already, just because of the snake dream?

My brain hurts thinking about these things. Some of the residents watch a soap opera every afternoon. I do not. Perhaps because I am not getting my requisite dose of drama, my brain is inventing some for me.

It is a stupid, stupid idea. I resolve not to do anything that could be interpreted as an overture of friendship, thinking that the boy's attentions will move on from me to someone else soon. And I will leave soon. Soon.

I fall into an afternoon sleep, deep and sudden, and the dream I have is vivid, as afternoon dreams so often are. 

He is there in the centre of a circle of people, lying naked and curled in a foetal position. I am one of those in the circle, and I know with the sudden certainty of dreams that if I look at the faces around I will see the dozen or so men of our discussion group. One kicks at him gently, pushing at him to get him to roll onto his back. The boy's erection is revealed, ruddy against the pale skin of his stomach, and swiftly the Thief crouches over him straddling his face and feeding his own cock into the boy's mouth. His hips pump as he fucks an orifice that wasn't made for it and the boy gags. We are in line, I realise, as Stubman gets up and the next man does exactly as he did, and then the next, and the next... I am in line, awaiting my turn, my cock feeling like it is so hot and full and ready to burst that all it will take is one thrust into that sweet mouth and I will come.

But I wake before I get my turn, aching and shivering, as the announcement on the public address system that it is ten minutes to dinner yanks me back to reality. I hurry into the washroom in the hall and into a stall--the only place where a measure of privacy is possible here. I pull at my cock desperately as I lean one hand against the wall, facing the toilet, so close in my mind and yet the reality is that the flesh has gone untouched. I dare not wet my hand for the sound that would make should anyone else come in would be telltale. Instead I tug at my foreskin with quick strokes, progressively quicker as I call up the image of the dream once again, his perfect cock jutting out from his body, the redness of his lips as they part to let another man's cock between them.

I come silently, my jaw clamped shut by sheer force of will. I won't share him, is the mad thought that escapes in that moment of weakness that comes with orgasm. Of course you won't, comes the sobering follow-up as I flush the evidence away. Because you won't be going near him.

I return to my room and beg off dinner when an attendant comes to check on me. Not hungry, I say. Not hungry at all. But I am lying.

 

*Part Two*

My recurring dream is full of unanswered questions. We are in a strangely dilapidated house, little more than a cottage. Whose is it? Why are we there? Who am I talking to? There is a man there, and sometimes I think the man becomes the snake. I said something that displeased him, I think. And why does the snake fly?

In individual sessions with Dr. Jacobs, I eventually tell her what I can. I fear that the strangeness of the details will only prove the insanity that would keep me institutionalized forever, but she is persuasive, and seems much less perturbed by the strangeness than I am. She explains that all the unanswered questions, the apparent mystery of the dream, is the result of my amnesia. My brain is asking, asking, asking all of the time, such that even when I sleep, it goes on.

But then why always the same dream? It feels to me as if I gain bits and pieces of it, as it is a memory that is slowly returning. But no other memories do. She warns me that the dream itself does not hold the actual answers and not to obsess over it. it is only symbolic of the memory loss.

Her advice does not stop me from waking with a scream trapped in my throat about once a week. And I begin to wonder if she is right. The Virgin appears in the dream one night, bending over me as I lie bleeding to death. This is surely my brain blending my fantasies together. 

I do not tell Dr. Jacobs about Harry's appearance in the dream. I receive my certification in accounting and start a course in tax regulation. Harry spends most afternoons in the computer room with me, though we rarely speak. His presence has moved from irritating to comforting, a fact I find irritating, and yet I accept it. 

I am surprised, therefore, one day when I make my way to the room after lunch, and find the Thief sitting there. "Stubman," I say with a nod in his direction as I make my way to my usual chair. 

He is seated backwards on his, legs splayed and his arms resting on the back of it. "Doe," he responds, after I have passed him and taken my seat. The machine whirs and I ignore him. "Doe," he says, a bit more insistently. "We've got a lot in common, you and me."

That pronouncement makes me turn my head. "Have we?" I ask, one eyebrow quirked sceptically. What is it he thinks he knows about me, and why does he think that? We are about the same age, of similar height and build, and both have jet-black hair that has not yet gone grey. That, as far as I can tell, is where the similarities end, unless one wants to add that we are both men.

Then again, perhaps that is the similarity that he speaks of. He slides his chair uncomfortably close to mine. "No one ever comes in here, do they."

No one but me and Harry, I think, but do not say. I just stare at him.

"Right, then," he says, and reaches for me. I am too stunned at first to pull away. He moves slowly, as if teaching me the first tentative steps of a ballroom dance, one arm sliding across my shoulders, the other hand seeking the front of my trousers. 

No belts here. He slips his hand into the warm, damp cave of my pants, and I can feel his palm is slightly calloused as he rubs my cock to hardness. Why I am allowing him to do this, I am not sure. Curiosity, perhaps. To learn that his insouciance, his flouting of the rules, and yes, his cockiness, stems from this kind of transgression fascinates me.

And it is physical pleasure. I have no memories, none at all, of anyone ever touching me intimately. This feels neither right nor wrong. It simply is. He does not ask me to reciprocate. I sit with my hands at my sides, and after a while he rubs the front of his own trousers, leaving my shoulders feeling unburdened but chilled. 

He strokes me until I come, then thrusts his slippery hand into his own pants and within seconds has added his spunk to mine. His face is beatific for a moment, enraptured in bliss. 

Then he stands, recovering quickly, a wad of paper napkins from his pocket in his free hand. He tosses me one. "Thank you, Doe," he says, as If I'd just shared a cup of coffee with him. Then he leaves the room.

A short while later--too short to be coincidence--Harry comes in and sits down, not at his usual computer, but in a chair facing me, his face hanging like a kicked puppy. "I... saw Stubman," he says, his voice heavy with the knowledge of what must have transpired. I wonder if he can smell the spunk in the air and when it was Stubman cornered him the first time. 

"Am I the last?" I ask, as it seems obvious to me Stubman is not choosy about his wanking partners. Perhaps he values novelty more than beauty. Or perhaps some twisted sense of completism?

Harry blinks, my question totally unanticipated. So much so that it startles an answer out of him. "Um, no. He's afraid of Chapman. And Willingham said no."

That gets my attention. "He'll take no for an answer?"

Harry's eyebrows fly up. "Shouldn't he?"

"And you? Did you tell him yes or no?" I mean it as did he present you any choice in the matter or did he just paw you like he did me but it comes out sounding jealous, as if I want to know for sure whether it is true.

He looks at me with a troubled expression. "Just tell him no and he'll leave you alone," he says after a long moment.

Hm. And now who is jealous? "What If I want him to? What if I enjoyed it?"

His face flushes, not with virginal embarrassment, but with anger. And he leaves the room so quickly he overturns the chair.

Tax preparation has never held less fascination than it does at this moment, but I force myself to turn my attention to it, to order my thoughts again after the utter chaos that those two curs have thrown my mind into.

The next morning's discussion is meaningless and empty as always. But now that I know the secret, I can see the web of influence Stubman has woven for himself among the others. A secret is power. I wonder how long he has been institutionalized. 

That afternoon in the computer room, though, it is Harry waiting for me. I was not, in all honesty, expecting Stubman. If he has maintained his secret this long, surely he knows better than to become predictable. He is reckless, yet careful.

Harry is just reckless. He dives in the moment I sit down. "In my dream, the snake is floating in the air."

I stare at him a moment too long. "Strange things in dreams are normal, according to Dr. Jacobs," I say. 

He sets his jaw, not wanting to be brushed off, but unsure what to say, now that I have deflected him. 

"How is your cashier training going?" I ask instead, prompting him, I hope, to turn to the computer. 

"Oh, that. I finished it a while ago." He shrugs. "It wasn't that helpful, really."

I am wondering what he could mean by that when I hear Stubman whistling in the hallway. He passes the doorway to the computer room and then goes on down the hall until I cannot hear him anymore. 

I make as if to stand, as if I've decided that today I will forgo the training session and read a book instead, but Harry puts a hand on my arm as I make to go past him. "You're in the dream, too."

He is looking up at me, his eyes clouded with emotion. It is possibly not even true, but his statement is clearly a statement of his intentions: I've been dreaming about you. I return to my seat, unsure what to do now that we have each other's attention. I am not so bold or foolhardy as Stubman. I will not just reach into his pants and tug him until he spills, no matter how enticing an image it is. 

If he wants intimacy, perhaps there is another kind we can share, just as taboo. "You told me once," I say, "that you do not remember anything."

He nods, settling back with visible relief. "I get inklings sometimes," he says, "where something seems familiar, but..." He shrugs. "You seem familiar."

I frown. Could it be we actually know each other from before? It is a seductive notion, and one I find myself helpless to resist. I am too lonely, too isolated, too desperate to throw away this chance at connection, even if it is only an illusory one. "You do not seem familiar to me," I say. "But I am amnesiac, too." I refrain from telling him that he, too, has appeared in my dreams, though.

We do not compare notes. That would likely shatter the illusion we share that we have something in common. And there is little to say, anyway. I cannot help but ask though, where his name comes from. 

"Oh, er, that was the one thing I did remember," he says, as if he is embarrassed to admit it. "Yours isn't Stephen Doe?"

I shake my head and explain about "John Doe" and Stephen Maturin in the books of Patrick O'Brian. "The first thing I shall do when I leave here is get the rest of the books." They are a series, and our paltry library here has only the first three, and these computers are limited in what they can access. It is maddening. 

"Will you leave soon?" he asks, voice carefully neutral.

"Maybe," I say, neutral in answer.

The moment hangs between us like a drop of dew on a spider's web. I find myself saying, "No one comes in here."

His answer is to lick his lips as he stares at my mouth. 

Madness. This is madness. But some part of my mind is saying that I will learn more about myself, about the world, about life, from kissing Harry Potter than I will from any computer or counsellor. 

I slip my fingers into his hair and pull him toward me. I have no memory of ever having done this. It does not even feel familiar. But then the taste of him is in my mouth and it is utterly new and utterly intoxicating. His tongue feels supple, warm velvet, and his breath smells of ozone.

We break apart, both pairs of eyes darting toward the doorway. 

It would appear we are unobserved. 

He sees the fear on my face. "I'm sorry. I... we shouldn't chance it." Yes, surely if they suspect I am having improper thoughts toward a man half my age I will be stuck here far longer than I hope to be. "I'm sorry."

He says this as if it were his idea, and not mine. Or perhaps like the self-sacrificing type. 

We do not speak of it again. But he does not leave me. I do not get far in the tax code programs over the next few days. We still go there every afternoon, and we are still alone, but now we talk. We each use the computers some--neither of us is sure if they have some method of monitoring what we do with them--but more and more, we talk.

Among the things we discuss, as we have little else to talk about, is Stubman. I am not surprised to learn that Harry knows quite a lot about him. He was apparently a popular performer of some sort, achieved middling fame, but it was all a rebellion against his powerful and rich family. He fell into drugs and through them the "bad boy" got a bit too mixed up with the wrong element. Did some prison time, then ended up here when a subsequent investigation proved his innocence, but not his sanity.

"What about you?" I ask, perhaps a week later, pretending to be reading a lesson but really doing nothing but staring at the screen. "When will you leave?"

I turn to look when he doesn't answer. His face is serious, far more serious than I expect. "I've got two months left," he says dully. "Most of the housing programs won't take someone as young as me. So even if I could get a job...." He shrugs. "It's probably the army for me."

I blink. "They're kicking you out?"

He nods. "They decided a while ago that I'm no longer broken enough to keep. And the army doesn't sound too bad. Except I look at Commander Chapman, and Mills, and some of the others and..." He shrugs again. Probably half of the residents here are former military. I do not know what horrors turned the Commander into a walking zombie. "It sounds like they do a lot of good, though. Saving people after natural disasters and such. That appeals to me more than just earning a living as a cash register boy or something."

Two months. That morning Dr. Jacobs had told me she thought I might leave in about two months, also. Was this Fate's way of telling me there was nothing to hang onto here? If so, why did my heart feel so heavy?

Two months and we'll never see each other again. I realise I am staring at him. Worse, he realises it, too.

"I want you to kiss me again," he whispers, swallowing hard as if it took immense bravery to say what he just did.

It did.

I give an infinitesimal nod, gesturing for him to move closer. Each computer sits in a sort of booth, as if each person were to be prevented from seeing what is on his neighbour's screen. 

How convenient. He rolls his chair until we are side by side, as if both looking at something on my computer's screen, but I am slipping my fingers around the back of his neck, and my lips and tongue are working to part his, to seek out that velvety interior more precious than a pearl. 

His hands have a mind of their own, grasping at me blindly while we kiss, his palm eventually settling as if by instinct on the warmth of my crotch. When our mouths part I find myself asking, "Does Stubman kiss you?"

He shakes his head, looking chagrined. "Never."

"Good. I want you to kiss only me." In the back of my mind I am screaming at myself. Are you mad? How can you be making demands like that of a boy you expect, very shortly, to never see again? Perhaps that is why I do not demand anything further. He may let Stubman jerk him off. I am magnanimous, am I not?

"Okay," he says, breathless. He looks up with wide, trusting eyes. It seems wrong. He should not trust me--or anyone--so much. 

His hand is still on my crotch. He moves it subtly.

"No." I shake my head. Not here. Not like what he does. Not what I want at all. I have no memory of what another person's skin would feel like sliding against mine, damp with exertion, but I know with great certainty that is what I want. Harry's skin on mine. Harry's teeth sinking into me to silence himself while I touch the core of his ferocity, deep inside him. 

Whether I will ever experience this, I do not know. He does look enticingly expectant, though. 

Don't go to the army. Come with me. I'll get a job keeping the books for some grotty little tailor in tax trouble, rent a bedsit on the edge of town, and you can hide in my attic and I'll fuck you senseless every night. 

Madness. Is that what he expects to hear? 

The sound of someone cleaning the hallway, the hum of a machine and the clack of its nozzle against the walls coming closer. We separate, each to our usual computers, but I am far too restless now.

I leave the room with a pat on his shoulder.

***

Madness. That is my first thought as I wake the moment I discern I am no longer alone. The door is still open, the wan light from the hall light forming a trapezoid on the floor. But there is the weight of a slim body in the bed next to me. I would have thought only Stubman could be that bold, but I can smell Harry. One of his fingers presses against my lips, a signal for silence as he burrows under the blanket. 

He... I swallow hard. He is naked and he is slipping my pyjama bottoms down off my legs. Then he is lying atop me, and I think, no, anyone who glanced in would see.

I urge him to move aside, even though his cock is throbbing against mine, like two magnets drawn to each other, they do not want to part. I force him to move, though.

He eventually understands and precedes me to the floor, to the shadow of the bed. Now a glance is less incriminating--after all, I might have been on a run to the washroom. 

Who am I kidding? We are likely to be caught but at this moment I do not care, as I grip him by the hair and pull him into a kiss. He is atop me again, and his body understands only one need, to thrust and thrust and thrust. 

I pause in my rough treatment of his mouth so that I may whisper in his ear. "Keep going until you come." He is young, surely that means he will be quick about it?

He is. I have my hands holding him by the head, one on the back, one over his mouth, as he spasms all over me, his cock jerking and spewing hot, slippery fluid between us. I let go when it seems he can keep himself from crying out, and now my hands grip him by the buttocks, as I thrust myself upward against his skin, the wetness making it a sensual pleasure unlike any I can recall. I pull him against me, in the rhythm my instincts set, until the only thing I am holding back is the bellow that wants to escape me as I come.

When he rolls to the side I feel the rough scrape of a napkin against my belly--I suppose I have Stubman to thank for training the boy in that. 

He allows himself one whisper before he exits the room. "This wasn't a dream."

I crush his lips to mine once more. I will kiss him more slowly, more sensually, some other time. I promise.

 

 

*Part Three*

Morning group session is excruciating. It always is, but this time the Village Idiot actually begins to cry when the Commander snaps at him. I am not paying enough attention to know exactly what set either of them off. I was staring at Harry's trainer, the one on his foot on the floor, and thinking about him. He has the other shoe up in the chair with him--that one I dare not look at. 

The only good part is that Dr. Jacobs has no time to harangue me about much, or even to pay much attention to me. Surely I must seem saner than they, more ready to engage with the world? We are not graded against each other, she has told me, but I cannot help but make comparisons. And at this point, my goal is to do nothing to make her change her evaluation of me, which has pronounced me fit to move on as soon as my paperwork is in order. 

A flat I have never seen has been secured for me, in a part of town I do not know. A job with a boss I have never met. All arranged through government channels.

It is as terrifying for me as the prospect of the army must be for Harry. The next step is a step into unknown territory. But then, whatever either of us would do next would be, with our heads blank slates as they are. 

Wouldn't it be better to just stay here indefinitely, like the Commander and Stubman? Harry has made one more surreptitious visit to my bed--the results identical to the first. Stubman has not propositioned me again; Harry never leaves me alone in the computer room. I am happy with that state of affairs. 

No. We cannot live like this. We have to move on. And yet I cling to this life, or this approximation of it, bordered so neatly by these walls, three meals a day, interspersed with moments of intense eroticism and moments of intense longing.

We are where we are every afternoon, in the computer room, when we hear a commotion. Heavy footsteps are running past the doorway--several sets of them. I look up in time to get an impression of a guard uniform, nothing more. We both rise and go to the doorway. 

"Let's see what's going on," Harry says.

I cluck my tongue. "Let's go the opposite direction and stay out of whatever mess it is."

He huffs. "Suit yourself."

"I'll be taking a nap before dinner, then." The blasted dream has kept me awake too much lately. I head toward my room, he toward whatever.

I have barely taken my shoes off though when he runs in, much out of breath. 

And in the nick of time as I realise with some surprise and wonder, that my door is closing of its own accord.

"Lockdown," he gasps, and although I have never heard the word before, its meaning is obvious enough. He catches his breath enough to say, "Chapman's taken hostages."

I am at the door, wondering at its... opaqueness. It has no window. I can hear nothing of the hallway beyond. "What do you mean, hostages?"

Harry sits on the edge of the bed. "He's got Sigmund in the library--not sure who else. Might just be him."

I turn and chuckle. "Perhaps Stubman finally decided to try his charms on the man." And perhaps he had been right to fear the Commander. 

His lip is out of place; he gnaws it. "That's not funny."

I wave my hand dismissively in the direction of the so-called library. "You don't seriously think Stubman will come to harm? Won't they just sedate them both with gas and sort it out later?"

But Harry shakes his head. "I don't think so. It might depend on what Chapman is threatening. I couldn't find out much before I realised I better sprint to get here. I flew through the halls to get here."

I am walking toward him, as if my body has come to a conclusion that my mind hasn't even considered yet. "Here?"

"Yeah. I knew you wouldn't know what was happening." His voice is so very young. "And I wanted... in case anything happened, I wanted to be... with you."

I have reached him, my hands finding his ribs under the thin cloth of his shirt. "What sort of anything?"

His voice is faltering as he looks up into my eyes, as he is realising we are alone and as unobserved as we have ever been in our acquaintance. "Chapman may have a gun. Or a bomb."

I brush my cheek against his. "Neither of us has any defence against those."

"No," he agrees, and presses his nose to the skin behind my ear. 

And then the time for talking is past, as I lift his shirt over his head and push him back onto the bed. His trainers and trousers come off easily, his pants quickly follow, and I am feasting on the image of his pale skin dusted with dark hairs, set against the institutionally beige sheets. I have never had to chance to look at him before. I run my hands down his chest, down his belly, noting the way his flesh quivers as I tease.

Tease. Taste. I take the time to taste him, the familiar velvet of his mouth, the unfamiliar salty buds of his nipples, the much better than imagined ripeness of his cock, leaking with eagerness as I stroke it with my tongue. He comes suddenly, without warning, into my mouth, and though the fluid is bitter I find myself lapping up what spills. 

He seems to feel it's his job to reciprocate. He tries to undress me, and at first I resist. But I have lost the knack of logic or reasoning. I had the moment I became attracted to him. I let him remove everything. 

He stares in shock at the tattoo upon my arm, so very dark and bold. He cannot believe he has not seen it before. But just as I had never seen him, he has never seen me. 

"Were you... in a band or something?" he asks, forgetting for a moment that I do not know the answer. "Or some kind of cult?"

I shrug. "I have no idea."

I lie back as he finishes stripping me, then I stiffen suddenly as an announcement comes over the speaker above the door. 

"Attention residents. This is Doctor Jacobs. Due to an emergency situation, we must ask that you stay in your rooms or wherever you are for the time being. This is not a drill. You will be notified when it is safe to emerge, or if evacuation will be necessary. Please pardon the inconvenience." She speaks the words by rote; no doubt this is the prescribed governmental speech, prewritten for this level of security breach. But I can hear the note of fear in her voice. 

Harry can, too, but he does not let that dissuade him from exploring me further. "Stay where we are, she said." He shrugs, and runs one finger along the length of my cock. "If you were in a cult, or a band, that symbol... you might be able to find out what it means. You might be able to go back..."

His hand is on my cock, stroking me now with slow, rhythmic squeezes of his hand. I shake my head. "No. No going back."

He frowns a little. "Why? How do you know it wasn't a good life you led?"

He is making me incoherent with lust. "No. It's... it's time to move forward."

He cocks his head. 

"I just know," I insist, not even sure where the conviction is coming from. "I've been stuck here too long."

He slides his thumb through the slippery fluid gathered at the slit of my cock and my pleasure intensifies. "What have you been waiting for, then?"

For you, I want to say, but that's daft. Bedroom talk. And yet there is a kind of truth in what one would say without thinking. Perhaps I have been waiting to make this connection, to experience something like this, so that I do not leave this place a virgin myself? Is this just another way to gird myself against the unknown?

My moment of self-doubt about my motives is cut short, though, by his next words. "Can we fuck?"

***

A brief search of my belongings produces a small jar of petroleum jelly in the desk drawer. I am sceptical that it is mine. Some previous resident might have used it for God knows what... though the surface is smooth as if never used inside the jar. I do not care. If I'd found dead flies in it, I'd probably have picked them out and greased my cock with it. Because the boy, now that his mind is made up, is driving me utterly mad with desire. 

He seems to delight as he puts one of his own fingers into his anus, spreading the lube inside himself, sniggering a bit as if he just discovered picking his nose. 

With a huff of mock irritation, I take the jar from him. "Let me do that. You need to be stretched."

He sits up against the pillows, eyes wide. "I do?"

"You do."

"How do you know if you have no memory of...?"

"The library may be woefully inadequate," I growl, as I slick my fingers, "but I have read every book in it. And while there are almost none of true prurient interest, one learns some things. If it is mere fiction that you need to be opened up for my cock to fit in you, well, it won't hurt to indulge that fiction. Whereas from what I have read, not doing so could truly be..."

"A pain in the arse?" He is full of mirth.

"As it were." I silence him momentarily by slipping one long digit into him, his smile turning to a round "o" and then to and actual sound.

"Ohhh, that feels good."

"We are on the right track, then." I move a second finger alongside the first, and now it truly does feel as though I am stretching him. At first the fit is so tight my knuckles grind painfully together, but as I pump them in and out of him, the grip loosens, It is only a matter of time before my fingers are sliding easily back and forth, and he is making the most enticing moans each time. 

A third finger seems about as much as is reasonable to do, and I keep adding jelly, wondering at what point my efforts to prepare him could turn to irritation or injury themselves. 

I pull back to look at him, to indulge myself again in the sight of him. "Do you want to be above me? You'll control the depth of the penetration that way..."

He shakes his head. "I trust you."

For some reason this pronouncement, as bald as it is, strikes at my core. So I do not argue. "All right. Lie back."

He scoots down, and I lay myself atop him first, luxuriating in skin against skin, cock against cock. His is awakening rapidly, which is good. "Do you want to touch yourself while I...?"

Again the shake of his head. "No distractions. Not to this."

"Very well." I shift my hips, slide lower, until the head of my cock is between his arsecheeks. He wriggles until we are both positioned. 

From here, all I know is to push. And push, and push.

Both of our hearts stop when I breach him. I'm certain of it. If he is in pain, he does not indicate it. 

I am disinclined to move just yet. This, this squeezing heat... I cannot tell which of us is the source of the throbbing sensation. I cup his cheek and bring my mouth to his, with careful licks and exploratory nibbles. His response sends a ripple down his body, a curving of his spine that drives my cock deeper. And then I am moving, I have to, because he is writhing under me, undulating and making needy sounds directly into my mouth. 

I have nothing to compare it to, other than the images in my head I have fantasized for months. Perhaps our fucking is quite banal. I do not know. The actuality of it is far superior to my imaginings. How was I to know that his breath in my ear would push me so close to the edge? Or that the scent of him under me would be so sweet?

That we came together was quite an accident. I'd intended to ensure that he came again, and my hand around his cock seemed a sure way to do that. But I hadn't intended to come myself just then. There was no stopping it, though, once he began to buck and spasm. 

The greatest luxury of all, though, of all the indulgences of the closed door, was falling asleep with him in my arms. 

***

I woke with a start. He was fully clothed and contemplating the door. "What are you doing?"

He started guiltily and turned to look at me. "It seems... the doors are not locked. Just shut."

I considered. "Perhaps since we are ostensibly in here for our protection, they lock against intruders, but would still allow us to escape in case of fire or the need to flee. Now, where were you thinking of going?"

I feel the need to put my own clothes on. I am trying not to look as if I am hurrying, though, as he answers. 

"I want to help."

I frown. "Help what? Negotiate the hostage situation? Are you trained for that?"

His eyes are sullen. "No. But Chapman was friendly to me. I know I'm one of the only ones he spoke to. And Sigmund... might need my help."

I find myself leaning against the door with one arm, as if to bar him exit. "You can't be serious."

He is silent.

"Stubman is a sex addict and a borderline rapist," I say. "He deserves none of your regard."

"You've never liked him."

"I've never liked anyone." My teeth click as I grit them. "Until you."

"But..."

"Remember what I was saying about it being time to move on?"

He cocks his head. "Yes."

"Maybe it's time you moved on from him to me. Or at least from the broken fragments you could have here, to what you can have out there." I'm reaching for him before I'm quite aware of it. "If you don't choose me, that is."

He blinks. "What do you mean, choose you?"

"She talked of an evacuation. What if we opened the window and fled of our own accord? They won't even realise we're gone probably until morning. And we'd have... a reasonable cause for fleeing. We thought our lives were in danger. A sane person wouldn't stay here."

"But what about the flat you have waiting? The job?"

I shook my head. "It's time to move on." I could feel the rightness of the words in my mouth. "You can come with me, and we can figure it out as we go along. It's a step into a vast unknown for both of us."

He puts his hand in mine. I pull him into a gentle kiss, a kiss that could only be shared by two hearts at peace. We go to the window together. And into the vast unknown.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> I realized while preparing this post, some 6 years after I wrote this story, that it is essentially an homage to Margaret Atwood's novel, WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME, which I read in college in the late eighties. 
> 
> For those curious what my canon-compliant explanation of the story is, it's written up in my fandom blog on Dreamwidth (http://ravenna-c-tan.dreamwidth.org/147154.html) or LiveJournal (http://ravenna-c-tan.livejournal.com/2008/09/08/)


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